Wisconsin’s sluggish job growth didn’t keep Scott Walker from winning his last two races for governor.

But could it be a drag on his bid for the White House?

“He’d like to be able to say, ‘I can go to Washington and get the economy running again,’” says political scientist Barry Burden, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who has studied how governors perform as presidential candidates.

The state was 35th in 2011, 36th in 2012, 38th in 2013 and 38th in 2014, based on the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages.

Wisconsin has persistently lagged behind the nation and most nearby states during Walker’s time in office, and a sizable chunk of the state’s voters are aware of that trend, polls show. Walker’s unmet 2010 campaign promise of 250,000 new jobs and the partisan war over his governorship has turned Wisconsin’s employment picture into an ongoing political saga fueled by chronically tepid jobs reports.

Most experts say that governors get more blame and more credit than they deserve for their home-state economies, which are shaped by broader factors.

“The direct correlation between a governor’s actions and the state of the economy in general is murky at best,” says John Weingart of the Center on the American Governor at Rutgers University.

But that rule is routinely ignored in campaigns.

“For a governor running for president, everything good about the state that can be attributed to the governor will be — by his or her campaign. And anything negative will be attributed (to that governor) by opponents,” Weingart says.

What does the state’s subpar job growth mean for Walker’s presidential ambitions?

First, some reasons to think it won’t hurt him very much:

It hasn’t hurt him so far. Walker won his 2012 recall fight and 2014 re-election amid sluggish job growth and Democratic attacks on his jobs record.

“So far as governor, he has navigated it well,” says Burden. “He has been able to draw attention to (other) indicators that are more favorable and turn attention away from and deflect the ones that are troublesome. If he can do that as a presidential candidate he’s going to have a lot of success.”

Job growth is only one measure of a governor’s performance. Walker can cite other more favorable economic measures, as Burden notes. As he tests the waters nationally, the governor touts the state’s unemployment rate (4.6%, which is below the national rate) and typically steers clear of jobs numbers.

GOP primary voters are probably more interested in other things. Walker’s early strength among Republican voters and activists outside Wisconsin has much more to do with his conservative policies and political success defeating Democrats and unions than with perceptions of how his state is performing economically.

In other words, there are far more powerful political factors in play. Rick Perry had great jobs numbers in his long tenure as governor of Texas (his state is no. 2 in private-sector job growth since 2004). But his presidential bid went nowhere four years ago and he’s considered a long shot in 2016. Jon Huntsman had great jobs numbers when he was governor of Utah, but in his 2012 race he was totally out of step with the GOP base. Mitt Romney had terrible jobs numbers as governor of Massachusetts from 2003 to 2007 (his state ranked 48th in private-sector job creation). But that didn’t stop him from winning the 2012 Republican nomination.

Now, let’s look at the other side of the argument. Here are some reasons why jobs could be a liability to Walker in 2016:

Job growth may be only one measure, but it’s a pretty important measure. It’s arguably a more meaningful indicator than the unemployment rate, which can improve for reasons that have nothing to do with economic growth (such as fewer people looking for work). It’s a measure of something everyone thinks is important. And it’s a measure Walker tied his performance to when he promised 250,000 new private-sector jobs in his first term (the state gained roughly 129,000 instead).

Job growth hasn’t shown signs of picking up. It takes time for a new governor’s policies to take effect, and Walker has often suggested an uptick in job creation is around the corner. But the state’s rate of private-sector job growth was only slightly better in 2014 than in the three previous years, and its ranking among the 50 states was slightly worse in 2013 and 2014 than it was in 2011 and 2012. More than four years into his tenure, there’s little sign job growth is accelerating. .

Tepid job growth undercuts a core component of the governor’s political message. Assuming he launches his presidential campaign as expected next month, Walker will run as someone who “turned the state around,” as he wrote in a post Friday for the conservative website, RedState. He will make that argument on many levels, but the jobs numbers complicate that message, because they don’t suggest an economic “revival.” Wisconsin often had slower than average growth under Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle, but the last time the state outpaced the nation in private-sector job creation was Doyle’s last year in office: 2010.

Every campaign is different, and Walker’s prospects will depend on a multitude of factors. That makes it hard to know what harm if any the state’s sluggish job growth will do to the governor’s presidential candidacy.

It’s possible that in the next several months, Walker’s GOP rivals will go after his jobs record.

But “even if his opponents snipe at him, he’s got another set of strengths (with GOP voters) he can point to,” says Burden. “I doubt (Wisconsin’s) economy is going to hurt him in the nomination phase.”

The issue is more likely to play a role if Walker becomes the nominee, however. Then it would become part of a broader attack on the effectiveness of his policies. Democrats would surely go after Walker on jobs, just as they went after Mitt Romney in 2012 for Massachusetts’ more dismal job ranking.

After the past four years, it’s a debate that would ring a lot of bells in Wisconsin.

To read more on Gov. Scott Walker and his expected bid for the Republican presidential nomination, go to jsonline.com/scottwalker.

About Craig Gilbert

Craig Gilbert is the Journal Sentinel's Washington Bureau Chief and writes the Wisconsin Voter blog about politics and elections.

The Wisconsin Voter is a blog about elections, political trends and public opinion in Wisconsin and the Upper Midwest. It is less about politicians than the people who elect them. It’s aimed at political junkies and general readers alike. Its subjects include:

The role this state and region play as electoral battlegrounds.

Voting patterns and trends at the local, state and regional level.

What makes voters here different from voters in other places.

Public opinion and the election climate.

Craig Gilbert is the Journal Sentinel's Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief and national political reporter.

Charting how each of Wisconsin’s 72 counties has trended politically compared to the U.S. as a whole over 60 years of presidential voting. Use the pull down menu to see charts for individual counties. Click here for an explanation of how the charts were done and how to read them.